“ HISTORY OF THE REFORMATION.” 363 
free access given them, and they reported no difference to him but 
nihilominus for nihil minus. If either this was too hastily examined, 
or if the writing seemed to favour those mistakes with which Dr. 
Hickes charges me—of which I could say nothing at such a distance 
of time—I am sure that, whatever might occasion the mistakes, 
there was no fraud intended ; there could be none ; nor was there 
any consequence to be drawn from it. It was shewed what Bucer’s 
proposition was, to which I fancied that Luther had once agreed. 
But, so exactly will I follow truth, that whensoever an attested 
copy of that letter is sent me from that learned body, which two 
worthy members of it have promised to procure for me, I will cer- 
tainly publish it in the next edition of my history. In a matter, in 
short, of no great consequence, there was too little care had in copy- 
ing, or examining, a letter writ in a very bad hand.”3 
In addition to these more distinguished authors, the Rev. Simon 
Lowth, or, as he is elsewhere denominated, “ the holy watchman,” 
stepped forth to join the hostile phalanx, and thought proper to ad- 
dress the bishop in terms so disrespectful and indecent, that, even 
in an age not remarkable for any thing like delicacy of feeling in 
those who exercised the censoria] office, they were yet proscribed by 
the more liberal and better educated part of the community. ‘You 
conceal Cranmer’s subscription*+ where you should have mentioned 
it. What shall we call this? Fraud, falseness, equivocation, shuf- 
fling, impudence? JI call it neither ; but some in England call it a 
Burnetlism, meaning a complication of all this !””5 
Now the coarse ribaldry, and the gross slanders, with which Mr. 
Lowth has stained the page of controversy, would have been passed 
over by us wholly unnoticed, if he had not coupled with them the 
scandalous accusation that Burnett and Bishop Stillingfleet had un- 
lawfully combined in their endeavours to Jessen the sanctity of the 
episcopal ordination ; and had employed Archbishop Cranmer’s name 
in furtherance of their iniquitous design, and also that of Archbishop 
* See Burnett’s Reflections upon Dr. Hickes’s Pamphlet, p. 79 (seq.) Tho- 
mas Crenius, in his Commentationes Theologice, had urged the same charge 
against our historian that Hickes had done, and published Luther’s letter at 
length.—See upon this subject IHist. of the Reform. vol. iii, p. 301. 
* To prove that this is a wilful misrepresentation, the reader has only to 
turn to the first volume of Records appended to the Hist. of the Reformation, 
and he will find a paper entitled “ A Declaration made of the Functions and 
Divine Institution of Bishops and Priests,” to which Cranmer’s name is sub- 
scribed, after the vicegerent Cromwell, p. 483. 
* See Some Remarks on Dr. Burnett, p. 14, by Simon Lowth. Lond. 1685. 
